'We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' Now, I suppose I need not
remind you that that phrase 'the glory of God' is, in the Old
Testament, used especially to mean the light that dwelt between the
cherubim above the mercy-seat; the symbol of the divine perfections
and the token of the Divine Presence. The reality of which it was a
symbol is the total splendour, so to speak, of that divine nature, as
it rays itself out into all the universe. And, says Paul, the true
hope of the Christian man is nothing less than that of that glory he
shall be, in some true sense, and in an eternally growing degree, the
real possessor. It is a tremendous claim, and one which leads us into
deep places that I dare not venture into now, as to the resemblance
between the human person and the Divine Person, notwithstanding all
the differences which of course exist, and which only a presumptuous
form of religion has ventured to treat as transitory or
insignificant. Let me use a technical word, and say that it is no
pantheistic absorption in an impersonal Light, no Nirvana of union
with a vague whole, which the Apostle holds out here, but it is the
closest possible union, personality being saved and individual
consciousness being intensified. It is the clothing of humanity with
so much of that glory as can be imparted to a finite creature. That
means perfect knowledge, perfect purity, perfect love, and that means
the dropping away of all weaknesses and the access of strange new
powers, and that means the end of the schism between 'will' and
'ought,' and of the other schism between 'will' and 'can.' It means
what this Apostle says: 'Whom He justified them He also glorified,'
and what He says again, 'We all, beholding as in a glass'--or rather,
perhaps, mirroring as a glass does--'the glory, are changed into the
same image.'

The very heart of Christianity is that the Divine Light of which that